


Spoke of A Wheel, Tip of A Spoon

by HarveyWallbanger



Category: The Terror (TV 2018)
Genre: Canonical Character Death, Disturbing Themes, Light Bondage, M/M, Missing Scene, Unrequited Love
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-03
Updated: 2019-12-03
Packaged: 2021-03-03 15:47:41
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 5,081
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21660625
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/HarveyWallbanger/pseuds/HarveyWallbanger
Summary: Should I pursue a path so twisted?
Relationships: Cornelius Hickey/Sgt Solomon Tozer, Cornelius Hickey/Thomas Jopson
Comments: 2
Kudos: 19





	1. I Might Say Cruel Things, but I Can Be Kind

**Author's Note:**

> The events of chapter one of this story take place after Morfin's death; the events in chapter two take place before Hickey and Tozer are to be executed in "Terror Camp Clear".  
In this story, I make certain assertions about the nature of Jopson's feelings for Francis. If that is not your thing, please don't read this story.  
The title of this story and the quote in the summary come from Patti Smith's song, Pissing In A River. The chapter headings come from Jean Genet's play, "The Maids".  
I am not involved in the production of The Terror. No one pays me to do this. This story and the work it's based upon are fiction. Do not try any of this at home. Thank you, and good night.

He feels like a servant; a boy, or an old man useful for nothing but clearing up the leavings of his masters. Morfin discharges the shotgun, and Solomon shoots. He shoots without thinking. He shoots because his reflexes are trained for it, because he’s a good shot. He shoots because it is his job, his duty; ground down deep into his bones, so that he feels sometimes as though he’s become an article or embodiment of it. Afterwards, instead of the pleasure and relief that come from doing a thing correctly, is this sense of having been brought low. A fool could see that Morfin hadn’t been trying to hit Fitzjames. Morfin wasn’t even really aiming. And Solomon had shot him all the same, because to fail to do so would be humiliating and wrong; because it hadn’t even occurred to Solomon not to shoot.  
Perhaps, Solomon thinks as he walks away from the scene, cleared by the captain, but in no way unburdened, he was always down there, always low, and just did not recognize it.  
So that, afterwards, it wears at him. It wears at him all night, until he feels certain that something else will happen. Morfin isn’t the only man showing signs of illness. Another will be that desperate. This one will not bother with the pretense. He’ll approach Solomon directly, and ask for what he wants Solomon to do for him.  
Was he brought here to put down starving dogs and lame horses?  
When the watch is over, he means to lie down, and simply let it wear at him. It’ll wear at him until it can do no more, and he’ll carry on. Until he ceases to draw breath, that is what there is to do.  
To spite the hour, Hickey is in the tent. Like he was waiting, Solomon thinks spitefully. He lets the spite bloom through him like blood dropping into water. It hurts, after a fashion, but the pain is so acute, so refreshing, like a tonic to his nerves, that he does nothing to stem its flow.  
“Quite an eventful night,” Hickey says, sounding pleased with himself, as though for a job well-done.  
“Leave it alone, Mr. Hickey,” Solomon says in the warning tone he used with his younger brothers. He takes off his gun, and sets it against the side of the tent. “And let me sleep,” he adds.  
“Why last night?” Hickey asks.  
“Why last night, what?”  
“Why did Morfin choose last night for his bon voyage?”  
Solomon means to take off his coat, but stays as he is, as though waiting for orders. “He was suffering.”  
“He’d been suffering. He looked for weeks like death, itself was breathing down his neck. So, why last night?”  
“Perhaps it finally got so bad that he couldn’t go on.”  
“He was offered remedies for his pain. Yet, he chose death.”  
Solomon frowns. “Maybe he lost hope.”  
Hickey smiles. “Yes. But why?”  
“You’re asking for logic where there is none.” Now, Solomon takes off his coat. A draught inches up his body, and he turns to close the tent. “In or out?” he asks Hickey.  
“In.”  
“Don’t you have duty?”  
“It can wait,” Hickey says, and sits down.  
Solomon closes the tent, and takes off his boots. He gets into bed. He closes his eyes, aware that Hickey is still sitting next to him; watching him.  
“What would make a dying man suddenly decide that this was the time to end it all?” Hickey asks.  
“You just answered your own question,” Solomon murmurs. “He was sick. He was dying.”  
“He did say something I found curious.”  
“I suppose you’d like me to ask what it is.”  
“He said: ‘Cut off my head. Put it with the others.’”  
Without meaning to, Solomon opens his eyes. He turns toward Hickey. This is absurd. He doesn’t want to do this. He closes his eyes again.  
“What do you think that meant?” Hickey asks.  
“The man was raving. His mind had gone,” Solomon says. It even sounds like a lie to him.  
“Perhaps,” Hickey says.  
Solomon sits up irritably. “What do you think, then?”  
Hickey pulls an innocent face. “I don’t know what to think. But what I do know is that something made Morfin take that marine’s gun, and it wasn’t the same pain that’d had him falling on his face for the past month.”  
“What do you think?” Solomon asks again, softly.  
Hickey shrugs. “Only that Morfin must have known something, heard or seen something that made death look like the better choice.”  
“The creature,” Solomon says.  
“Hasn’t been sighted since you put the cannon ball through it.”  
“What, then?” Solomon asks. Why does he sound desperate to hear the answer? He already knows it.  
“He never shared his concerns with me. You, however, have gone out on watch with him. He might have confided something, then, away from the camp, where others might hear.”  
“We weren’t on those terms.”  
“Perhaps it was something he saw while out on watch. My thinking is that it must be this, for anything occurring in camp would have been noticed by others, and somebody would have said something.”  
“Maybe they have, but they just haven’t said it to you.”  
Hickey smiles. It’s like he already knows. He knows, but he must have Solomon say it, for some personal triumph. It makes Solomon want to keep it from him all the more. If Hickey knows, Hickey can be the one to say it plainly. “What could Morfin have seen out there?” Solomon asks.  
“Proof that our situation is much more dire than we’ve been led to believe.”  
“It could scarcely be that much more dire, unless he happened to discover that we’ve fallen off of the face of the earth.”  
“You were with him. You had to have seen it, yourself.”  
“This is assuming that Morfin was in his right mind, that what he saw, if anything, would have been visible to others.”  
“Morfin’s mind wasn’t what killed him.”  
“Let it go,” Tozer says again, and lies back down.  
He feels Hickey lie down next to him. He turns onto his side, away from Hickey.  
When Hickey speaks, Solomon feels the warmth of his breath: “What I think, and you can tell me if I’m wrong, is that he learned something unfortunate about our rescue party.”  
Solomon frowns.  
“That’s the only thing that comes to my mind,” Hickey continues.  
“What if he had?” Solomon asks quietly.  
Does Hickey move closer? His voice is softer, now. “That would certainly explain why he felt the need to do what he did.”  
“He was sick.”  
“He’d been sick for some time,” Hickey says definitively. “What I wonder now is, if he discovered this on watch, on watch with you, and you also knew, what did you do about it?”  
“If that had happened, the captain would have had to have been told.”  
“And what might the captain have done about it?”  
“I suggest you pose that question to the captain.”  
“I’m posing it to you.”  
“What could he do?” It is beginning to wear on Solomon again, though he’s not sure what causes the irritation, now.  
“He could tell us.”  
“He might have reasons for thinking better of it.”  
“Might he not also trust us to bear the full weight of our situation?”  
“You might ask him that.”  
Hickey places a hand on Solomon’s shoulder. “I’m asking you.”  
“What would you do, if you knew all?”  
“Only what we’ve been planning to do since we left the ships, or have you forgotten? Not having second thoughts, are you?”  
“No. Only, I fail to see how any of this matters, either way.”  
“Do you not think that it helps our cause?”  
“It’s not a cause,” Solomon grumbles, moving away from Hickey. Not far enough away to shift Hickey’s hand from his shoulder. “It’s just staying alive.”  
“Can you think of a cause nobler than that?”  
He sits up, noting with satisfaction that Hickey starts back. “Do you want to know the truth?”  
Hickey looks at him, eyes wide and clear. “You know I do.”  
Solomon sighs. He gives his report. He waits for some sign that Hickey is surprised by this, that he did not already know all. That this was all simply to see what Solomon would do. When he’s finished, Hickey says, “So, it’s as we thought. Help is not coming.”  
Solomon sighs, “Now, will you let me sleep?”  
Hickey smiles. “Why do you want to sleep? We need to determine our next course of action.”  
“What ‘next course of action’? We wait for a time when we won’t be missed, and we leave.”  
“Do you think it’s as simple as that?”  
Solomon sighs again.  
“You know what we have to do,” Hickey says gravely.  
“Then we need to increase our number.”  
“And how shall we do this?”  
It is now that Solomon feels, strangely, unburdened; absolved, in a way that not even the pronouncement of the captain could do. “What I’ve just told you would persuade a great many, as you, yourself, said. Go, and persuade.”  
“What proof do we offer?”  
“What proof is needed?”  
Hickey smiles. “Convince me.”  
“After all of that, you think I’m lying?” He doesn’t believe it, but it stirs in him anger, indignation, all the same.  
“I wasn’t there. I didn’t see it for myself.”  
“I was, and I’m telling you what happened.”  
“What did happen? What did you see?” Hickey asks softly.  
“The rescue party, dead. Their heads were…” as he says it, the sight rises before him, and he suppresses a shudder. “… Arranged. In a line, on a stone shelf.”  
“By whom?”  
“Does it matter? Whether it was the creature or the Esquimaux, something out there killed those men, and could be coming for us.”  
Hickey shrugs. “There’s safety in numbers. Why would a smaller group fare any better?”  
“Why would Crozier order Morfin and me to stay silent? Why would he not want every man in camp on guard for another attack?”  
“Perhaps he means to do as we, and leave camp.”  
Solomon makes a face. “For where? Where would he go?”  
“It was he who was supposed to lead the rescue party.”  
“What?”  
“Before Franklin was killed, Crozier was ready to walk out.”  
“Well, why didn’t he?”  
Hickey shrugs. “Perhaps he thought as you did, that it would be better to make it off of the ice first, after we’d done him the favor of hauling the boats.”  
“How do you know this?”  
Hickey sits up a little straighter. “I found his letter of resignation.”  
“Found it where?”  
“In his rooms.”  
Solomon looks at Hickey. A cold feeling creeps through him. Suddenly, he feels as though he doesn’t know Hickey at all. “What were you doing there?” he asks quietly.  
“It wasn’t the first time I’d been in his rooms.”  
Solomon laughs. “Mr. Jopson just let you come and go as you pleased, did he? Like the dog?”  
“Jopson wasn’t there,” Hickey says deliberately. “No one was, save the captain and myself.”  
“You’re lying.”  
“I’m not. No more than you were about what you saw.”  
“So, you’re asking me to trust you, I take it.”  
“And why not? We have to trust each other,” he says gravely. “The direction is unknown; the path, uncertain.”  
“And what if that path should lead to the gallows?” He means it as a rebuke, but saying it chills him further.  
So that he’s glad of the warmth when Hickey moves slightly closer, finds himself leaning toward Hickey as Hickey regards him solemnly. “Then, I shall take it with you. Whither thou goest.”  
Solomon laughs derisively, yet he stays as he is. In expectation of what he knows will come, he closes his eyes, but it still surprises him when he feels Hickey’s mouth against his. That it’s soft, and sweet makes it all the more dreadful. This is not the time for things like that, Solomon thinks bitterly. It makes a mockery of all of the rest. The deaths of those men. The captain’s perfidy. Whatever else Hickey was trying to say about the captain without saying it. The distinct possibility that Hickey is lying, to gain advantage, or for his own amusement. Yet, he allows Hickey to continue, his hand on Solomon’s cheek. Solomon’s hand on Hickey’s waist.  
“My payment?” Solomon asks.  
“The sealing of our agreement.”  
Solomon sighs. “If you don’t go out now, someone may come looking for you.”  
Hickey kisses him again, quickly, looks into his eyes. “We’ll discuss this further.”  
Sighing, Solomon nods, lies down again. He hears the tent open, and Hickey go out. If he was being worn, he is now, he supposes, worn smooth. None of it seems to touch him any longer, and all he feels is the buffeting tide of sleep.  
Sometime later, he feels something else. A weight against his back. Sensation comes to him gradually until it fills his mind, and he starts awake.  
“Mr. Hickey,” he says, his voice weary with sleep. It’s not a question. He knows who it is that bears on him.  
“Sergeant Tozer,” Hickey says brightly, his breath warming the back of Solomon’s neck.  
“You might take more care in not making yourself known if you mean to take advantage of a sleeping man.” It should anger him, enrage him, outrage him. It’s strange that it doesn’t, but Solomon knows that whatever Hickey’s intentions might be, violence isn’t one of them, though it would be worse for Hickey if it were. His hand is on Solomon’s hip, but it only rests there, above the blanket.  
“You’re no longer asleep.”  
“Well, get on with it, then,” Solomon says.  
“We need to arm ourselves,” Hickey says, his hand slipping below the blanket.  
“Then your business is with Mr. Armitage. Maybe his is the next name on your dance card.” But he feels a kind of bitterness when he says it. He doesn’t tell Hickey that he’s already tried, and failed; with Crozier, no less. He doesn’t think about having failed. He pushes the bitter feeling down, and moves back, closer to Hickey, his rear against Hickey’s front. He halfway means it to shock, but Hickey only relaxes around him, moves his hand up Solomon’s waist. Down, again.  
“Better to create a situation where its necessity is plain, rather than take what would soon be missed, when the time of our flight is uncertain.”  
Solomon sighs. All of this is obvious. So obvious, that Solomon has already tried it. And failed. “I’ll see what I can do.”  
“Good,” Hickey says, sounding content. His hand moves inward, to the front of Solomon’s trousers. He keeps his hand there for a long moment, only resting, only holding, until Solomon moves to press himself into it. “Not sleeping at all, anymore,” Hickey says blithely.  
“No,” Solomon says. Before he can stop himself, or even consider what he’s doing, what he means by it, he rolls over, turns Hickey onto his back. Hickey tries to get away, but it’s not with very much conviction. He lets Solomon take up his wrists, hold them over his head. He must permit it. Nothing happens without Hickey allowing it, Solomon thinks, angrily, but with a cloying affection at the borders of anger. He felt this, even when Hickey was lashed, pushing out Solomon’s horror, and pity. Who could pity someone like Hickey? Hickey’s whole being seemed to reject it, and Solomon to respond, in kind. If Hickey would not be pitied, then he must be disdained. He must have wanted it that way.  
Yet, he lets go of one of Hickey’s wrists, and touches Hickey’s face. “This is what you want, isn’t it?” He means to sound cruel, mocking, but he only sounds unsure to himself. He doesn’t like it, so he kisses Hickey. Hickey opens his mouth, makes a sound of so soft a yearning that it must be false, yet it strikes Solomon, down deep someplace he hasn’t felt anything for so long. Hoping for the sound again, Solomon pulls aside Hickey’s shirt collar, kisses his neck. He kisses Hickey’s mouth again. His wrist, even, which bears a small red mark at the pulse, from Solomon’s thumb. He pushes aside the blanket, arches himself up and then back down, aligning his body with Hickey’s.  
Hoping for the sound.


	2. Filth Does Not Love Filth

_“I’ve shot smaller hawks than you.”_  
After a moment, Hickey asks, “Is that what you were thinking of, when you were given your promotion? How far you’d come from your humble beginnings?”  
Thomas says nothing. He’d resumed looking at the blood on his fingertip, rubbed into a carmine stain by his thumb.  
Hickey continues, “You weren’t speaking like this when you thanked him for it, were you?” Hickey answers his own question, “I don’t think you’d let him hear how you really sound. It might have made him think twice. Or perhaps...” Without thinking, Thomas looks at Hickey. Hickey smiles. “He would have appreciated it. Maybe it was why he did it.”  
“Why?” Thomas says absently. He didn’t mean to speak. He had begun to forget that Hickey was there. Hickey may as well not be there, but for the weight of him, as though Hickey is something that Thomas has to carry, from one point to another. As though with exertion, his sinews cry out, then sing, as they do when the effort has been kept up for so long that it ceases to be recognized as effort, but is only a kind of cold weariness, filling him completely.  
“Why he promoted you,” Hickey says slowly, softly. “Maybe he sees himself in you. Maybe it pleases him to force someone like you on the office. You’re not born for it. No more than him.”  
“You think you know what I am?”  
“I do.”  
“And I know what you are, Mr. Hickey.”  
“I know what I am, too. I seem to be the only one around here who does.” Hickey sits up, fixes Thomas with a look filled with pity, though whether it is for Thomas or for himself, Thomas cannot say. “What do you think you are to him?”  
Thomas rolls his eyes. “Peddle that elsewhere, Mr. Hickey.”  
But Hickey continues, his expression becoming graver, as though having finally become aware of something long obscured. “You’re not his equal. You’re not his son. You’re not his mother. You’re not his wife. He has Fitzjames for that.”  
Without thinking, Thomas raises the gun. “Watch what you say, or those words might be your last.”  
Hickey shakes his head. “You may have orders to shoot me, if it’s necessary, but not to kill me. That’s not your privilege. I’ll tell you what you are, Jopson. You’re his servant. A piece of paper doesn’t change that. You could rise to the rank of captain, admiral- you could be knighted by the queen, herself. You’d still be Crozier’s servant. That is not in dispute. The question that I would ask of you is, is that all you want to be?”  
“Better his than yours, Mr. Hickey.”  
“But it’s not what you want,” Hickey says, now smiling, in that way he must think is winning.  
“And what is it you think I want?” He realizes too late that he’s allowing himself to be drawn in. But what danger can there be if he recognizes it for what it is? The desperate attempt of a condemned man to save his life. The defensive posture of a creature that finds itself cornered, and lacking the dignity to accept its death, will fight until the end.  
“You want him to love you.”  
As though from a sudden shock, Thomas frowns. He makes himself bite down on the inside of his cheek.  
“Perhaps he does,” Hickey says. “Has he said as much?”  
Thomas says nothing.  
“How does he say it?” Hickey turns his head slightly to the side. “Does he say, ‘Thomas, I love you’?” Hickey’s voice changes slightly at the end; not sufficient for parody, which makes it all the more galling. It’s with a kind of lightness that he takes on the captain’s tone, betraying study, interest.  
A strange, nauseous feeling creeps through Thomas’s guts. Thomas tightens his grip on the gun, though he already has a good hold on it.  
“Or are you always ‘Jopson’ to him? Does he say, ‘You’re a good boy, Jopson, and I love you’?”  
Thomas says nothing.  
“Perhaps he says it in some other way. How does he say it?”  
Thomas will remain silent.  
“If it’s a failure of the imagination on my part, Jopson, I’d appreciate it if you told me. I can tell by your expression that I’m missing something.”  
“You are missing something, Mr. Hickey, though what it is or why, I cannot put name to.” There can be no harm in saying this.  
“Then, say it as he does. You know him far better than I ever could.”  
Thomas shakes his head. “How could you possibly hope to profit from this?”  
“Everything can be bought, including a man’s life.”  
“What do you imagine, then? That you’ll turn your talents to my favor, and in gratitude, I’ll let you go?”  
Hickey raises his eyebrows. “Well, yes.”  
“My interests don’t run in that direction.”  
“No? In which direction do they run?”  
“Away from you.”  
“And toward whom?”  
Thomas shakes his head. “I know about the way you carried on with Mr. Gibson. There’s nothing for you here.”  
“It’s less a matter of my person, then, than of my habits? You’re in luck. I can change my habits very easily.”  
“Change them to silence, Mr. Hickey.” This is beginning to wear on him. Outside, he can hear the carpenters sawing. How long does it take to construct a gallows? Strip one of the tents, and throw a rope over its beam.  
“Tell me how he says it.”  
“Be quiet,” Thomas sighs.  
“Speak to me as you wish he spoke to you. I can do that for you, at least.”  
“And I free you?” Thomas laughs.  
“Be the captain, and show mercy.”  
Again, Thomas laughs. “If I were the captain, I would have done for you long ago.”  
Hickey’s expression changes slightly; his eyebrows raised, his eyes wide. He looks… sad. “For what offense, Captain?” He sounds almost as though his breath catches in his throat.  
Thomas rolls his eyes. “Choose whichever one pleases you most.” He keeps meaning to be quiet, but the idea of Hickey having the last word makes him feel ill at ease. It would stick to Thomas, in a way. Everyone would somehow know what was said, wonder at Thomas not having a rejoinder to it; not having fought Hickey, fought his insistence on befouling everything he sees. If Thomas can’t clear Hickey away, set right what Hickey has dirtied, then what good is Thomas?  
But Hickey will not be cleared away so easily. “I’ve only ever tried to please you.”  
It would be laughable if it weren’t so profane. “Mr. Hickey, please be quiet.” When will the sawing end, and the hammering commence?  
“Don’t I please you?”  
Thomas tries and fails to find some trace of jest in Hickey’s expression, but it’s contrite, even solemn. If you didn’t know him for a liar, and worse, you’d think it genuine. His eyes are wide. His mouth is open slightly. He looks stricken. Hurt. It’s so convincing a pose that you begin to feel it, yourself. His hurt is contagious.  
The man is a plague.  
“No, you don’t,” Thomas says, in a far harder voice than he means to. “You disgust me. You foul everything you touch.” It’s the truth. Hickey must know it to be true, not part of Hickey’s game. Yet, in saying it, it feels to Thomas almost like artifice. To point a gun at Hickey, to threaten him, is the natural course of action, but this is not. Aside from everything else, Thomas just doesn’t speak this way. He finds he must continue. “All I do is wipe up your filth. Sometimes, I fear I’ll drown in it.” He feels himself color. Too far, he thinks. Too far in which direction, though? Not too far from the truth, for Hickey is everything Thomas says, and worse.  
“But that’s your job, isn’t it?” Something changes about Hickey’s expression, his bearing. It’s something small, something Thomas couldn’t name, but it happened, leaving Thomas unsteady in a way he can’t name, either.  
“I should shoot you,” Thomas says.  
“You’d only be doing me a favor,” Hickey says.  
It’s jarring. Hickey must be about twenty-five, but the voice that emerges from him sounds older, wearier than his years should permit. Somewhat nervously, he finds, Thomas laughs. He sneers. “You, unhappy?”  
“More unhappy than someone like you could imagine.”  
“Someone like me?”  
“A servant.” He’s sad when he says it, as though at Thomas’ inability to know without being told.  
“I thought we were both meant to be servants,” Thomas says quietly.  
“There’s a difference between being a servant and serving a cause,” Hickey says. “Only one of us could call himself free.”  
“And you mean to free me, I suppose.”  
“If I did, you’d never thank me for it. Besides, I like having you chained to me. To spite what you are, I do love you. You’re a good boy, Jopson, and I love you.”  
Never mind the gallows. They should garrote Hickey.  
The nauseous feeling returns, a cold crawl up Thomas’ back, down again into his guts.  
Whatever his orders, Thomas should shoot Hickey dead.  
It crawls lower, still, a curdling warmth.  
Now, Thomas understands.  
Cut Hickey’s throat.  
“On your knees,” Thomas says.  
Leave Hickey tied up on the waste, let the creature come for him.  
Hickey kneels, understanding simmering behind his eyes.  
“Turn around.”  
Huffing with the effort or the indignity, Hickey turns around, falls forward onto his hands.  
“Hands behind your back,” Thomas says, letting himself sound annoyed at Hickey’s misunderstanding, enjoying it.  
Hickey rises back up onto his knees, crosses his wrists behind his back.  
Thomas closes the opening to the tent. He looks around, finds nothing fit to his use. He sighs. He pulls down Hickey’s braces, twists them around Hickey’s wrists, securing them. He turns Hickey around again to face him.  
“This is quite a turn-up,” Hickey says, bitterly amused.  
“You must not know as much as you think you do.”  
The set of Hickey’s features is suggestive, evocative. Familiar, Thomas will allow. “Do what you’re going to do,” Hickey says.  
“Say it,” Thomas says.  
“What would you like me to say, Jopson?”  
“Tell me what you think I want to hear.”  
Hickey’s smile is sad, rueful. Fondly so. “I love you, Jopson. I only regret that it took me this long to tell you.”  
“Thomas.”  
Hickey lowers his eyelids. His smile softens into an expression of indulgence. “I love you, Thomas.”  
He’s been ordered to guard Hickey. He’s been trusted to do it properly. Trust only extends so far. Anyone could come in. They’d be within their rights. His promotion will be rescinded. There’ll be a court martial for him, after this. They may hang him simply to be rid of him, Thomas having proved himself to be useless. He kisses Hickey, opening his mouth. Hickey’s mouth opens against his. The sensations are all wrong. It doesn’t mean that they aren’t welcome.  
“Tell me again,” Thomas says.  
“You first,” Hickey says. “Unburden yourself.”  
He presses his mouth to Hickey’s ear. He closes his eyes as he says it. He pulls back. “Say it,” Thomas says.  
“Wouldn’t you rather that I showed you?”  
Anybody could walk in.  
Thomas has to hurry.  
He stands. He undoes his trousers. He places his hand on the back of Hickey’s head. Leans toward Hickey as he pulls Hickey in toward him.  
Too late does it occur to Thomas that Hickey could bite him.  
Far too late.  
He pushes hard into Hickey’s mouth, to see what Hickey will do.  
Hickey bears it, breathing in raggedly through his nose.  
That’s not right, Thomas thinks absently. That’s not how it would happen. That’s not how Thomas would do it. If it were real. Thomas should be on his back. Lying on a soft bed. The bed that Thomas would have made that morning. The bedclothes Thomas would have touched, himself. His head resting on the pillow. The pillow from which Thomas will sometimes brush a strand of ginger hair. Thomas should be on his back. Pinned down. Hemmed in. Weighted, like a body being dropped into the sea. There should be the weight of a body above him. The sensation of the weight atop Thomas, hot, oppressive, bearing down on him, mixing with the gentleness of the hands that touch Thomas. Hands that could do anything to Thomas. Hurt him. Beat him. Stifle him. They are gentle, though. They caress Thomas. Thomas should be undressed by those hands. He should be naked. He should be exposed. He should be taken apart.  
There’s only one person Thomas wants to do it.  
Thomas knows that body. Has been permitted to touch it, in the course of his duties. Felt the tension that never leaves the shoulders, when putting on his jacket. Had a hand on the cheek, the chin, when shaving him. Ventured a steadying hand on the shoulder, the arm. Wiped the sweat of illness from the brow, the cheek, the throat. Smoothed his hands over the hair. Thomas has touched him; wiped him clean, tidied him, dressed him, undressed him, assured him, gentled him, caressed him. In every way but the literal act, Thomas has loved him.  
In his way, Thomas is loving him, now.  
Thinking it, Thomas comes apart.  
He takes his hand off of the back of Hickey’s head. He pulls away. Where Hickey’s spittle paints him, the air chills him. The chill digs down deep in him. He trembles. He dresses himself. He takes out a handkerchief.  
“Spit,” he tells Hickey.  
“Not necessary,” Hickey says.  
Frowning, he wipes Hickey’s mouth.  
“Turn around.”  
Though, he has to help Hickey, Hickey’s arms still bound; his hands on Hickey’s shoulders. He unties Hickey’s hands, rubs the marks on Hickey’s wrists, straightens his clothes. He picks up the gun.  
“That’s my end of the bargain held up,” Hickey says. He stands.  
Thomas raises the gun, points it at Hickey.  
Outside of the tent, the carpenters are hammering. The sound could be church bells.  
Whatever else he may say, Hickey will not have the last word.


End file.
